As the world food supply is taxed more and more by the expanding world population and as spreading famines and the fear of still greater food shortages become more prevalent, much attention is being given to the development of more efficient and productive sources for generating large quantities of food.
One important source of food is the ocean to which man has looked for food since the beginning of civilization. In recent years, there has been a growing competition between nations for fishing areas where the supply of available sea life for this purpose is beginning to dwindle relative to the growing demand.
While seafood has been consumed primarily by localities having ready access to the sea, recent advances in food processing and preserving such as freezing have brought about a dramatic change in seafood consumption, especially in the United States where sea foods are now popular across the entire country. This new popularity of seafood is particularly evidenced in the rapidly expanding consumption of shrimp in this country which reached a level of one million pounds per day in 1973 and has been increasing ever since then.
Because of this growing demand for new food resources and in particular because of the rapidly increasing consumption of shrimp in the United States as the supply becomes increasingly less adequate, it is highly desirable that methods and equipment be developed for increasing the annual harvest of shrimp.